I don’t know about you, but sometimes cute little memes intended to help me “look on the bright side” fly all over me.
Sure, if life gives you lemons (bad hair day, late to work, long line at the grocery store) make lemonade.
But sometimes it’s not lemons life gives you, it’s an avalanche of pain, heartache and world-shattering awful.
Read the rest here: Distant Music
When your scale of awful is off the charts, there’s a tendency to dismiss anything less as merely inconvenient or inconsequential.
But that’s just not how our hearts work.
You can be shattered by child loss and still feel the slings and arrows of everyday losses, disappointments, discomfort and sadness.
It’s OK to mourn the things that don’t measure up to the pain and despair of burying a child.
Read the rest here: You Are Absolutely Allowed To Mourn *Smaller* Losses
We say it often.
Usually after someone we know or someone we love or someone famous is suddenly and unexpectedly taken from this life to the next.
And for a few minutes or a few days or a few weeks we think more carefully about what we say, what we do and what we worry about.
Read the rest here: Tomorrow’s Not Guaranteed. Live Like It.
When days become months and months become years it’s hard to explain to others how grief is both always present but not always in focus.
I’ve struggled to help those outside the loss community understand that the absolute weight of the burden is precisely the same as when it fell on me without warning that dark morning.
Dominic’s absence, if anything, has seeped into more places, changed more relationships and influences more choices than it did seven years ago when I was only just beginning to comprehend what a world without him would look like.
But I, and my family, have continued to live.
We’ve added family members through marriage and birth. We’ve gone places, made memories and made career moves. We’ve gotten older. My husband retired. Children moved away.
All these things and more mean that life is simply bigger than it was when Dom left us.
It’s a slow, gradual process. And for some hearts who are forced to endure multiple losses in a short time the jar may never get very large because the grief is so great.
I remember when I realized that sorrow was not ALL I felt nor Dominic’s absence ALL I saw. It was a bit frightening to be honest.
Did that mean my love for him was waning or that his importance in our family was forgotten? Was I a bad mother because I no longer cried every day for the child not here? Had my heart grown cold?
But then I realized none of those things were true. What allowed me to feel joy again, to participate fully in family outings or gatherings, to plan holidays and birthdays once more was instead that my heart had found a way to hold both sorrow and gladness at the same time.
There are still days when grief looms large and my world seems too small to contain it. But those don’t come as often as they once did.
Life will march on, regardless of how hard we might wish it wouldn’t.
And, in large measure, life after loss is what we choose to make of it.
I’m not abandoning Dom by embracing my life now.
In fact, I’m sure he’d approve.
I have been asked how I can believe in what I cannot see or touch. How I can trust a God Who allowed such pain in my life.
It is true that I can’t see God, I can’t prove His existence.
But the fact that I’m still holding onto hope gives testimony to the life of Christ in me.
Read the rest here: Then and Now: How Can Death and Life Inhabit the Same Frame?
I despise the platitude plastered across social media memes: “Hard times either make you bitter or better”.
It makes it sound so simple.
As if all I have to do is make a single choice between two equally available paths.
Enduring deep pain and unchangeable circumstances requires continued commitment to face the fork in the road over and over, and to choose well each time.
Read the rest here: A Daily Struggle
Fairy tales and favorite movies aside, what does love really look like?
How can I see this feeling that has driven some to distraction, some to destruction and even more to dedication to another in spite of whatever obstacles life has placed in the path?
It’s not often writ large.
In fact, it’s usually tiny stitches in the tapestry of life.
Read the rest here: How Can I See Love?
I remember as a young mother of four working hard to keep my kids safe.
Next to fed and dry (two still in diapers!) that was each day’s goal: No one got hurt.
It never occurred to me THEN to add: No one got killed.
Read the rest here: What is Safe?
I’ve found myself in a bit of a writing funk these past weeks. Once January draws to a close (a short reprieve from surviving the holidays) the calendar barrels on to the anniversary of that fateful day.
This will be the seventh time I’ve weathered that period where I mark all the “lasts” and try to honor Dominic’s life and not only focus on his death.
For someone who used to be able to draw up a game plan for any occasion, I am still out of my depth when it comes to commemorating the date of my son leaving for Heaven.
So I’m sharing this again-as much for me as for anyone else. It’s just plain hard. But I hope these ideas help another heart find a way through the minefield of remembering.
Read the rest here: Child Loss: Marking the Milestones
Yesterday I finished a short video for a bereaved parents event that should have been completed a week (or two!) ago.
I just kept putting it off and putting it off for no good reason other than I didn’t want to do it.
It wasn’t hard, didn’t cover ground I haven’t already explored dozens of times and really only took about thirty minutes to complete including set up and recording.
But I just wasn’t feeling it.
I’ve been more than a little undermotivated these past few months and as I enter what I call my “season of sorrow” marking Dominic’s departure for Heaven, it’s gotten worse.
There have been a lot of changes and adjustments in the past twelve months-some associated with the larger pandemic story and impact and some peculiar to my family. All of those in addition to the usual ebb and flow of grief (yes, even after nearly seven years!) have contributed to a (not laudable) attitude of, “What difference does it make?”.
It’s kind of the emotional equivalent of stretchy pants. It’s easy to ignore a few extra pounds or inches as long as you can still fit in your clothes.
I’m weary of death.
Weary of daily social media posts pitting one “side” against the other as if there could possibly be any “winners” in this awful scenario where the virus is claiming lives and the attempt to limit death is claiming businesses, young folks’ college years and individuals’ mental health as they face isolation and devastation.
I’ve been weepy the past few days thinking of the parents who have had to bury children (whatever age) and spouses burying lifetime partners. I don’t have an answer for any of this except that I wish we would all be more compassionate and less territorial or political.
There is a very happy and exciting visit on the horizon that is lighting a fire under my backside. I hope I can overcome my lack of motivation and choose to lean in and work hard to get ready for it.
I want to, with all my heart.
I hope to, with as much energy as I can muster.
My default (in the past) has always been running wide open.
Let’s see if I can rekindle that flame.
❤
![[Under] Motivated](https://thelifeididntchoose.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/maybe-tomorrow-.png?w=1200)
